Between the crazy people within the house and the suburban critters without, this life of ours is pretty wild, indeed.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Busy morning oatmeal

Now that it's colder in the mornings (if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, that is), cooked breakfasts in general - and oatmeal in particular - make more sense than a steady diet of cold cereal. However, few of us have time to be standing over a stove to keep the oatmeal from boiling over. So allow me to share three ways to fit oatmeal into your jam-packed morning:

Rice cooker oatmeal - if you have a rice cooker, you're sitting on a wonderfully underused gadget. Get that bad boy out and dust it off. Put in 4 cups of water, 2 cups of oats, and a handful of raisins. Push "cook". In about 20 minutes, you'll have perfect oats that cleans up great and serves about four. If you don't have a rice cooker, get one - it's totally worth the space it takes up.

Crock Pot Oatmeal - Seriously, there are oodles of recipes out there for crock pot oats. Often, steel cut oats are used. They do stand up to being in the crock pot a bit better than normal oats, but if you can't find steel cut, don't let that stop you. Shave a couple hours off the cooking time and give one of theserecipes a try.

Make your own instant oatmeal - Dump half a cup of oats into your food processor or blender and pulse a few times. You want it chopped up a bit, not turned to dust. Stick that in a plastic snack or sandwich bag along with some dried fruit. Then, in the morning, empty the bag into a microwave-able bowl with a cup of water or milk and stick it in the microwave. Kids can make their own oatmeal! Easy.